The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Friday, November 27, 2015

How a university named after an American Jewish icon became a home for Jew haters and terrorist propagandists.

Click here to learn more about the Freedom Center's Stop the Jihad on Campus Campaign.

Brandeis University’s Mandel Center for the Humanities recently hosted Gideon Levy.
Levy, the author of articles such as, “Did Israel Really Think Hamas
Would Turn the Other Cheek?”, is yet another in a line of Students for
Justice in Palestine speakers who have justified the racist murder of
Jews.

Last year, SJP’s Israel Apartheid Week included Max Blumenthal, an advocate of the ethnic cleansing of Israel, whose views even critics of the Jewish State find horrifying. A Forward reviewer wrote of his previous book that, “It could have been published by the Hamas Book-of-the-Month Club.”

One of Blumenthal’s attacks on Israel was cited by the Neo-Nazi gunman who tried to murder Jews outside the Jewish Community Center in Kansas City. Blumenthal was deemed too hateful by the German Communists who had invited him to speak. And yet he was not too extreme for Brandeis’ SJP.

Jewish students at Brandeis are forced to cope with a campus where Students for Justice in Palestine campaigns for Rasmieh Odeh,
who took part in the bombing of a Jerusalem supermarket before the
Sabbath. Leon Kanner and Edward Joffe, two Hebrew University roommates
who had come there to buy canned food, the way so many college students
do, were torn to pieces by bombs hidden in coffee cans.

This murderous act of hate recalls for many Jewish students the recent
ISIS massacre of Jews at a Kosher supermarket in Paris that also took
place before the Sabbath. They have to ask themselves whether SJP
Brandeis would also support a terrorist who murdered them the way that
Ezra Schwartz was just killed.

Would Brandeis permit a campus
group to campaign for of any of the racists who bombed black churches in
the sixties? If not, why does it allow Students for Justice in
Palestine to do the same thing?

At Brandeis, Students for
Justice in Palestine has carried on an unrelenting campaign of hate and
demonization of Jews and the Jewish State. SJP even protested Israel
Peace Week. If SJP at Brandeis is incapable of even tolerating a peace
week, is there anything of the Jewish State it can coexist with?

While Brandeis SJP officially claims it “does not have a stance” on
the one-state solution, a euphemism for the destruction of Israel, its
Facebook page has advocated for it. This dog whistle for genocide is
typical of Students for Justice in Palestine groups which use chants
such as “from the river to the sea” and false maps as codes for the
necessity of destroying the Jewish State and its Jewish population.

This is a sad development for an institution named after Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

It was Justice Brandeis who said, “To be good Americans, we must be
better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists”. Through
its hosting of the SJP hate group, Brandeis is preventing its Jewish
students from living fulfilled lives as good Americans and better Jews.
It is making the expression of their full Jewish identities incompatible
with attendance.

Brandeis University joins three notorious University of California
campuses, Irvine, San Diego and Los Angeles, where conflicts between
Jewish students and the SJP hate groups have made them notorious to
Jewish families deciding where their children should attend college.

Also on the list are San Francisco State University, Rutgers,
Columbia, Harvard, the University of New Mexico and the University of
Michigan-Ann Arbor. These colleges were listed by the Freedom Center as
part of its Stop the Jihad on Campus campaign because the hate spread on their campuses must stop.

In the words of David Horowitz, “These terrorist supported
organizations are afforded campus privileges, including university
offices and the right to hold events on campus grounds that would be
denied to any other group that preached hatred of ethnic groups or
supported barbaric terrorists who slaughter men, women and children as
part of a demented mission to cleanse the earth of infidels.”

Numerous reports have exposed the hateful ideology of Students for
Justice in Palestine. Harassing Jewish students who identify as part of
their community continues to be the hate group’s agenda.

Together with the Muslim Students Association, a group which has contributed disproportionately to Al Qaeda as chapter president after chapter president
joined it and other Islamic terrorist groups, these organizations often
act as the political campus arm of terrorist groups like Hamas and the
PFLP, celebrating terrorists such as Leila Khaled and Rasmieh Odeh as icons while promoting BDS and calls for the destruction of Israel through the so-called one-state solution.

This isn’t activism. It’s terrorism.

Like their terrorist counterparts, they choose disruption over
dialogue, harassing, intimidating and shouting down Jewish students and
speakers. On these ten campuses, the SJP and MSA hate groups have become
particularly virulent forces of destruction selling a distorted
narrative that meets the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism for its demonization of Israel and the Jewish community.

SJP has no end goal except the destruction of Israel. It is not
fighting for any other final outcome. Its various forms of activism are
aimed at harming Israel to provide aid and support to its favorite
terrorists.

When it brings speakers like Max Blumenthal to campus, who advocate for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel, and celebrates terrorists like Rasmieh Odeh
who helped kill Jewish students, SJP Brandeis makes the university
complicit in the murder and mass murder of Jews. By housing and funding
SJP, Brandeis has provided space and support to those who dehumanize
Jews and justify their murders.

And that must stop.

In 1915, one hundred years ago, Louis Brandeis spoke powerfully of how
Zionism had endowed Jewish students with the courage to stand up to
anti-Semitism at their universities, quoting, he said, “Until then they
had been despised and often ill-treated… If struck or spat upon by
'Aryan' students, they rarely ventured to return the blow or the insult.
But Zionism gave them courage.”

It is this courage, this
identity that the SJP bigots want to strip away from today’s Jewish
students. While their heroes, like Rasmieh Odeh, murder Jewish students,
they seek to make Jewish students a “despised” group, an object of
hate, who have been too intimidated to even defend themselves.

The Freedom Center’s work aims to help students find the courage to
defend themselves while confronting the universities whose support for
hate groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine has revived the
old anti-Semitism even in a place named after the man who dedicated his
life to fighting it.

Daniel Greenfieldis a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

In map of Middle East accompanying article on '2016's scariest geopolitical hot spots,' Israel is replaced with 'Palestina.'

Where is Israel?

Screenshot

CNNsparked outrage this week after posting a news article on its website in which Israel was literally wiped off the map.

The article, titled, "Beyond ISIS: 2016's scariest geopolitical hot
spots," featured a graphic of the Middle East in which Israel is
replaced with a red square marking the country of "Palestina."

According to HonestReporting, the picture, using a Spanish or Portuguese translation of "Palestine," was taken from Getty Images and not created by CNN's graphics team.

Commenters to the site were quick to lambast CNN, asserting Israel would likely still be in existence next year.

HonestReporting Managing Editor Simon Plosker, meanwhile,
slammed the news network's "illustration of the Middle East without
Israel" as "completely unacceptable."

"At a time when the state’s very legitimacy is being called into
question by vicious anti-Israel extremists, any message that Israel does
not belong in the Middle East plays into this false narrative and feeds
those like the Iranian ayatollahs who wish to see Israel erased from
the map."

"How many times can CNN keep making these shoddy errors before the network takes remedial action to address its Israel problem? We fully expect CNN to replace this inaccurate map as quickly as possible."

Following the backlash, CNN took down the image of the map and replaced it with one of war-torn Aleppo in Syria. Cynthia BlankSource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/203971#.Vld70b-zdds Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

In a November 20
interview with Sky News Arabia, Kuwaiti academic and journalist Prof. Ibtihal
Al-Khatib called for an urgent reexamination of the school curricula. Pointing
out that ISIS emerged "from our schools, from our ideology, and from our
books of heritage," she said: "Either we reform our [religious]
discourse and join modern life, or we will become extinct." Al-Khatib, who
is a professor of English language and literature at Kuwait University, further
suggested "removing the Islamic education curricula completely, and
perhaps replacing them with curricula about the history of religions."

Ibtihal Al-Khatib: "We have gotten used to a victim mentality, and have
somehow learned to enjoy it. We always feel that we are victims, the ones being
attacked, the ones that the world conspires against. Therefore, when others
suffer disasters or catastrophes, we tend to express naïve and childish
vindictiveness. We saw this in the case of the Russian plane that went down in
the Sinai, and we saw it again in what happened in France. We do this rather
than see things realistically."

Host: "Some say that justifying terrorism is tantamount to
terrorism. Do you agree?"

Ibtihal Al-Khatib: "Absolutely. Any attempt to justify or to legitimize
terrorism is a terrorist idea, and is just as dangerous as the terrorist act
itself, because the idea and the act are equally dangerous.

[...]

"I believe that there is a clear sentiment
critical of ISIS, but by the same token, there is a strong pro-ISIS sentiment,
and there is sympathy toward the Islamic State. This is why ISIS is growing. It
is not growing in a void, and it did not emerge in a void to begin with. It
emerged from schools, from our ideology, and from our books or heritage, the
contents of which the Islamic thinkers refuse to reexamine.

[...]

"If you do not reform yourself, the world
will not wait for you. We are facing two options. Either we reform our
(religious) discourse and join modern life, or else we will become extinct. I
really believe that stagnant nations, which stick to principles that are at
odds with the progress of civilization, are bound to come to an end. Such nations
will not survive."

Despite US concerns that it will put all aircraft - including those in Israel - under Russian threat, Moscow deploys system to its base.

Russian S-400 'Growler' anti-missile systems

Reuters

Flaunting the concerns of the US, Russia's state-owned RIA Novosti news agency announced on Thursday that Moscow has deployed its advanced S-400 anti-aircraft missile system to a base in Syria.

The S-400 anti-missile system, known to NATO as the SA-21
"Growler," is said to have a maximum range of 250 miles, and can bring
down airplanes at up to 90,000 feet - more than double the height of a
cruising commercial airliner. The range puts Israel squarely in the system's sights.

Russia's decision to deploy the system to its base in Latakia,
located in western Syria where it is propping us Bashar al-Assad's
regime, comes after Turkey downed a Russian Su-24 fighter jet on
Tuesday near the Turkish-Syrian border, killing one pilot.

The system has been placed in a region some 50 kilometers (just over
30 miles) from Turkey, adding extra urgency to the tensions between
Russia and Turkey.

An American official on Wednesday said there are "significant concerns"
over the deployment, and spokesperson William Stevens of the US Embassy
in Moscow said earlier on Thursday that the deployment "will further
complicate an already difficult situation in the skies over Syria."

The system does "nothing to further the fight against ISIL, as they have no air force," he told Interfax, using an alternate acronym for Islamic State (ISIS); Russia claims it is in Syria so as to fight the jihadist group.

Stevens said that the US expects Russia to honor a joint memorandum
signed between the sides, which is meant to ensure flight safety in the
area of military operations in Syria. The US is heading an anti-ISIS
airstrike campaign in the country.

The S-400's range covers most of Syria, southern Turkey, the eastern
portion of the Mediterranean Sea, much of Israel and the British airbase
of Akrotiri in Cyprus.

No less than 300 targets can be tracked simultaneously by the radar
complex of the S-400, which sports six anti-aircraft missile launchers. Ari YasharSource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/204019#.VleCmL-zdds Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

What finally seems to be
dawning on the Swedes is that while the government puts the right to
asylum before the safety of its own people, the country could be filling
up with terrorists.

"No, 'Sweden' has not been naïve. You, your party and your
coalition partners have been naïve and you still are." — Mattias
Karlsson, Parliamentary group leader of the Sweden Democrats.

The announcement that a person such as Dirawi, who professes to
be of the Islamic faith, and who according to Islamic scholars should
believe the celebration of the birth of Christ is a heathen tradition,
will be Christmas Host, sparked feelings of anger and betrayal.

From the night of the Paris attacks until Tuesday, when Sweden's
government announced it was reversing its open-borders policy, Sweden
was in a state of turmoil. No matter what the government said, it
accomplished nothing -- other than making the Swedes increasingly livid.

When Prime Minister Stefan Löfven accused his people of being naïve
about radical Islamism, anger exploded on social media. You could read
comments such as: "No. Some of you have been naïve. The rest of us have
been labeled fascists and other ugly things."

The shock and horror of the Paris attacks -- in which one Swedish
woman was among the 130 dead and another among the 350 wounded -- had
barely subsided when the Swedish people received another blow. On
November 18, a grim Security Service Chief, Anders Thornberg, held a
press conference during which he revealed that a combat-trained ISIS
terrorist was suspected of having entered Sweden and a warrant was
issued for his arrest. Because of this, Thornberg had raised the threat
level in Sweden from three to four on a scale of five -- meaning the
country was now facing the highest "threat level" since the scale was
introduced in 2010.

The Security Service Chief, as well as various Ministers, then urged
people not to be alarmed. The suggestion had little effect. Rumors ran
rampant on Facebook and other social media that police in Stockholm had
told their family members to "stay away from the inner city for the next
four or five days as the threat was a lot more serious than what had
been made public; apparently they are looking for more terrorists, about
20 people; you need to decide for yourselves. In any event, the threat
is bigger than what was shown on the news."

The next day, the Stockholm subway, which normally transports 1.2 million passengers a day, was rather desolate. Then, on November 20, the Security Service confirmed that an attack had indeed been planned to take place in Stockholm.

The day after the nationwide alert, the suspected ISIS terrorist was apprehended.
It turned out that he had sought asylum in Sweden under the name Mutar
Muthanna Majid, and had been living for several weeks at an asylum
seekers' home in the small mining village of Boliden in northern Sweden.

Only after the arrest did Prime Minister Stefan Löfven speak out in public. During a press conference,
he announced stricter anti-terror laws to deal with foreign Islamist
extremists, which he now admitted posed the biggest threat to Sweden,
and not the only one:

"We know that about 300 Swedish citizens have gone to
Syria and Iraq to fight alongside ISIL. We also know that about 120 have
returned. The Security Service believes that among them, there are
individuals who pose a threat to our society and have also committed
crimes against people in other countries. It is unacceptable that people
can travel, participate in terrorist acts and come back without being
held accountable -- and drain the society of large resources."

Next, the Prime Minister claimed that "Sweden has been naïve,"
conveniently forgetting that he had called those who were not naïve --
those who had expressed concern about the Islamization of Sweden --
"racists" and "Islamophobes." He also neglected to mention that as far
back as May, Security Service chief Anders Thornberg had raised the alarm
that Sweden could not handle any more jihadism. At the time, Thornberg
had also expressed concern that foreign jihadis would take advantage of
the Swedish asylum system -- through which more than 90% of applicants
lack identification documents but still got permanent residency -- by
hiding among the refugees.

A few days after Mutar Muthanna Majid, the suspected terrorist, was
arrested, the District Attorney dismissed the Security Service's
evidence against him. On November 22, Majid was released and all charges dropped. A columnist from the daily Dagens Nyheter, Lasse Wierup, called the Security Service's conduct "astonishingly unprofessional."

Even as the mass immigration of Muslims to Sweden increased at an
explosive rate during the last few years, the government kept stubbornly
insisting that it did not entail any problems. According to the
government, everyone was the same, and it did not matter if Sweden was
populated by Swedes or by Muslim Somalis, Iraqis or Afghans. Those who
insisted otherwise were ruthlessly branded "racists" and "Islamophobes."

Finally, last week, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven stood up on live television, and said:

"I must say that Sweden has been naïve in this regard.
Maybe it has been hard for us to accept that in our open society, right
in our midst, there are people, Swedish citizens, who sympathize with the murderers of ISIL."

In response to questions from Gatestone Institute about who, exactly,
was being called naïve, Mr. Löfven's press secretary, Dan Lundqvist
Dahlin, said that the Prime Minister had in mind "Swedes in general."
When asked if that meant Löfven was blaming the Swedish people for the
peril the country was now in, Dahlin replied: "The Prime Minister says
that we have been naïve in Sweden. He means me and you and you and you
and you!"

When asked if that meant he was accusing the Swedish people of being naïve, Dahlin said:

"But can't you see what I mean? It is not an accusation.
If someone feels accused, that is his problem. I suppose he means
politicians and everyone else."

The Prime Minister's statement seemed to outrage many Swedes. The hashtag #naiv ("naïve") immediately started trending on Twitter, and people began posting comments such as:

"I have been called many things over the years, but this is the
first time I have been called naïve. By the Prime Minister no less. Not
bad."

"Why is Löfven saying that 'Sweden' has been naïve? Very, very many have warned about exactly the situation we are now in!"

The only political party that warned about the Islamization of Sweden
was the Sweden Democrats, and it has consistently been shut out of all
consultations. During the press conference, Löfven called for national
unity and invited all the opposition parties to talks -- except the
Sweden Democrats. He even said:

"In moments such as this, it is important that Sweden
stands united. There is no room for partisan squabbling or party
politics here. That is why I have invited the right wing-bloc for talks
on how to fight terrorism."

The Sweden Democrats' Parliamentary group leader, Mattias Karlsson, wrote on Facebook: "No, 'Sweden' has not been naïve. You, your party and your coalition partners have been naïve and you still are."

Karlsson reminded the public of the massive criticism of the Sweden Democrats, when its members recently handed out flyers
to migrants in southern Europe. The flyers -- signed by the Sweden
Democrats and "the people of Sweden" -- urged asylum seekers not to go to Sweden. Journalists and politicians then attacked the party for speaking on behalf of "the people."

"Judging by the media storm and the comments of government
representatives about our flyer the other week," Karlsson wrote, "I got
the impression that speaking in the name of the Swedish people was
utterly terrible, but apparently, that was not the case."

Löfven, appearing on the newscast TV4 News, was asked if
stricter border controls should have been introduced earlier, to prevent
terrorists from entering Sweden. Löfven was evasive, but the question
was actually inaccurate.

The border controls Sweden had introduced in past, meant, in reality,
nothing. The borders were as wide open as ever to anyone claiming to
seek asylum. The flow of migrants was as big as before: 10,000 new
asylum seekers a week.

While the mainstream media is careful to avoid telling the public about this, Dispatch International recently broke the story
that at the Öresund Bridge, which connects Sweden and Denmark, the
border police performed only random checks -- and only on people not
claiming to seek asylum. The people who claimed to seek asylum were not
checked at all. They were simply transported to an Immigration Service
facility. There, they were fingerprinted and photographed; however, as
very few of the asylum seekers actually have passports or other
identification documents, it takes months even to get a "probable"
identification.

While the identity of the asylum seekers was being investigated, they
were not held. On the contrary, although many are actual refugees or
honestly seeking better lives, they all were sent to various asylum
facilities around the country, where, if some wished, they were free to
plan any terrorist acts they liked in peace and quiet. For example,
Mutar Muthanna Majid, the man who a few days ago had been suspected of
being a terrorist, even had his own apartment in the Boliden village --
with his name on the door.

Instead of closing Sweden's borders, Löfven kept pressing for a
redistribution of Sweden's asylum seekers throughout the EU. He called
the EU countries that did not have open borders (all except Sweden,
Germany and Austria) "irresponsible." He apparently did not reflect on
the idea that the responsible thing might, in fact, have been to protect
your own people, and put their well-being first.

Keeping the country's borders wide open and calling terrified people
"racists" and "Islamophobes," while claiming "we have been naïve," did
not exactly increase the Prime Minister's popularity. The daily Metro recently reported
that Löfven's Social Democrats now have only 21.4% of Swedish voters on
their side, while the Sweden Democrats reached a new record of 26.7%.
Moreover, according to the same survey, despite people tending to rally
around their leaders in times of crisis, Löfven has become one of the
government's least popular ministers – in 21st place out of 24. His
Deputy Prime Minister, Green Party leader Åsa Romson, is the most
unpopular.

The poll also showed that more and more Swedes believe that the most
important political issue right now is the migrant problem. Since the
last poll a month ago, the number of people believing this has grown to
64%, an increase of 8% since October.

What finally seems to be dawning on the Swedes is that while the
government puts the right to asylum before the safety of its own people,
the country could be filling up with terrorists.

To add insult to injury, Swedes have just found out that the host of
the Christmas Show on Swedish Public Television -- a very prestigious
role designed mainly to comfort lonely people who do not have anyone
with whom to celebrate Christmas -- will this year be a young Muslim
woman, Gina Dirawi, aged 24. Regrettably, on several occasions she has
made anti-semitic remarks, yet she nevertheless keeps getting new TV hosting assignments.

Swedish
Public Television's appointment as Christmas Host of Gina Dirawi, who
professes to be of the Islamic faith, and who according to Islamic
scholars should believe the celebration of the birth of Christ is a
heathen tradition, sparked feelings of anger and betrayal in Swedes.
(Image source: Expressen video screenshot)

The Public Service director, Safa Safiyari, who recently introduced
Dirawi to a large press gathering, came to Sweden at the age of 14. In
newspaper articles, he has spoken about
how he does not feel "fancy" enough for the Swedish archipelago; and
how, in 2001, when he got to do current affairs shows for young people
about "all the injustices in Sweden," it felt as if it were revenge for
all the injustices he said he has experienced in Sweden and that still
characterize his life.

The announcement that a person such as Dirawi, who professes to be of
the Islamic faith and who according to Islamic scholars should believe
that the celebration of the birth of Christ is a heathen tradition,
will be Christmas Host, sparked widespread expressions of anger and
disappointment on social media. Comments were posted on Twitter, such
as: "Public Television has declared war on Christian Sweden by choosing
Muslim Gina Dirawi as Christmas Host! It is shameful!" And, "If things
continue down this road, by next Christmas, Christmas ham will be
banned."

Safa Safiyari told the daily Göteborgs-Posten,
that Swedish Public Television had been prepared for all kinds of
reactions: "We have chosen Gina Dirawi as Christmas Host based on her
competence, her comedic talents and experience in large television
broadcasts. When we hire our Christmas Hosts, religious belief is not
something we inquire about."

Ingrid Carlqvistis a journalist and author based in Sweden, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Gatestone Institute.Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6957/sweden-muslim-christmas-show Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The deadly consequences of America "leading from behind" in the fight against ISIS.

Leading from behind, or more accurately, failing to lead at all, has its consequences. Turkish jets shot down a
Russian Su-24 fighter jet Turkey claimed was over its airspace, and
both pilots were reportedly killed. In addition, American-backed Syrian
rebels shot down a Russian rescue helicopter, killing one crew member.
Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva will now be deployed off
the Syrian coast, with Lieutenant General Sergey Rudskoi warning that
"every target posing a potential threat will be destroyed,” and all
military contacts with Turkey "will be suspended.” As PJ Media’s Richard
Fernandez deftly explains, the
latest turn of events is "a clear sign of how dangerous Obama's Syria
policy has become. The vacuum left by his policy has not only engendered
a chaos which has destroyed whole countries, but it has drawn in great
powers whose armed forces are operating in dangerously close proximity.”
In short, this is how wars begin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned Turkey there will be "significant consequences” for what he characterized as
a "stab in the back" committed by "accomplices of terrorists.” The
Turkish military insists that two jets approached their border and were
warned “10 times” before one of the planes was shot down. Putin disagreed.
"The Russian bomber was shot down over Syria by an air-to-air surface
fired from a Turkish F-16 plane when the bomber was at an altitude of
6,000 meters at a distance of 1 km from the Turkish bomber,” he stated.

Army Col. Steve Warren, the top military spokesman in Baghdad, backed Turkey’s
version of the event, but hedged in the process of doing so. “The
incident happened at the border,” Warren said. “These things are not as
clean as they are in the movies.” He further explained command was
studying radio chatter, radar images and other data before making a
definitive conclusion. Later, however, a U.S. official reported to
Reuters that the Russian jet did appear to have been shot down over
Syrian airspace after briefly entering into Turkey.

Regardless, this is the first time a NATO member’s military has shot down a Russian or Soviet aircraft since the 1950s.

Putin is hardly blameless. He has spent considerable effort testing American, British and other NATO
nations’ airspace in recent years. Unfortunately for the Russians,
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was less accommodating than Obama
and Cameron. Erdogan insisted level-headedness
had prevented even graver incidents at the border, and that the fighter
was shot down in line with Turkey's rules of engagement.

Erdogen further maintained he bore no "enmity" toward Russia or any
other nation, but criticized Moscow for its incursion in the Turkmen
regions where there were no ISIS fighters. He also indicated he would
continue to support the Turkmen community in Syria. Thus, we have a
confrontation between a megalomaniac with dreams of restoring the
Ottoman empire versus an ex-KGB thug who dreams of a Soviet Union
revival. And because Turkey is a member of NATO, whose members are bound to defend each other, the risk of escalation, while improbable, cannot be ignored.

President Obama, no doubt sensing an opportunity to tweak his foremost adversary, insisted the
incident might not have occurred if the Russians were more interested
in targeting ISIS than the so-called Syrian moderates who opposed
President Bashar Assad. “I do think that this points to an ongoing
problem with the Russian operations,” Obama said. “In the sense that
they are operating very close to a Turkish border, and they are going
after moderate opposition that are supported by not only Turkey but a
wide range of countries.” He further insisted “some of those conflicts,
or potentials for mistakes or escalation, are less likely to occur” if
Russia focuses on ISIS, and that Turkey “has a right to defend its
territory and its airspace.”

Obama made
his remarks while standing next to French President Francois Hollande,
who was in Washington. Ironically Hollande was there in part to urge
Obama to work with Russia towards building a coalition to fight ISIS.
Apparently the French President is insufficiently impressed by what
Obama referred to as a “robust” coalition of 65 countries fighting
against ISIS, up from 62 in 2014.

Yet as
Foreign Policy Magazine revealed last year “robust’ is a slippery term.
"Although many countries have pledged military or humanitarian support,
the State Department indicates that simply 'exposing ISIL’s true nature'
can qualify a nation for the coalition,” it stated.

Nonetheless both presidents agreed to carry on
with Obama, stating the U.S. and France “stand united,” and that ISIS
“cannot be tolerated” and “must be destroyed.” In the meantime, Hollande
intends to admit 30,000 Syrian “refugees" into France, while Obama
remains committed to taking in 10,000, despite the House passing a
bill aimed as halting the settling of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, and
overhauling a screening process. Forty-seven Democrats joined their GOP
colleagues in favor of the measure.

Regardless, Obama remained defiant. “Nobody who sets foot in America
goes through more screening than refugees,” he insisted. If that sounds
familiar, maybe it’s because Hollande also insisted France will continue to "do the necessary checking before accepting refugees on [its] territory,” five days after the second terror
attack against his nation this year. He also doubled-down on the same
maddening denial of reality that afflicts Obama. "Some want to establish
a link between the influx of refugees coming from the Middle East and
the terrorist threat,” he stated.

As for Obama, it would appear his administration is dedicated to
denying reality. In a bombshell admission made Monday, Rep. Jackie
Speier (D-CA), one of the ranking Democrats on the House
Intelligence Committee, said it was likely administration officials
doctored the intel on ISIS to make it seem as if more progress was being
made than had actually occurred. While she believes the intelligence
community has provided more accurate assessments recently, “CENTCOM,
which is the area that is responsible for the Middle East... has dumbed
down the intelligence, has sweetened it, has made it seem like we
are being more successful there than we are … ”

​Add the power vacuum engendered in the Middle East by our
see-no-Islamic-evil president, and the lack of anything resembling a
coherent strategy is a recipe for disaster. Putin is a small enough man
that he will likely exact revenge from the Turks, and Erdogan might just
well be willing to return the favor. All while Obama dithers and
promises us--yet again—that he will degrade and destroy ISIS with a
strategy that includes dropping leaflets on
Syrian drivers before bombing ISIS oil tanker trucks "to kind of shoo
people away without harming them,” according to Operation Inherent
Resolve spokesman Col. Steve Warren. "We have not struck these trucks
before," Warren revealed. "We assessed that these trucks, while although
they are being used for operations that support ISIL, the truck
drivers, themselves, [are] probably not members of ISIL; they're
probably just civilians. So we had to figure out a way around that.
We're not in this business to kill civilians, we're in this business to
stop ISIL — to defeat ISIL."

Perhaps
someone should have asked Warren how many civilians will be exterminated
by ISIS while they remain viable entity -- because the Obama
administration cannot abide an iota of collateral damage.

"History teaches that wars frequently start by accident,” Fernandez
warns. "Otto von Bismarck who understood that accidental discharge can
kill a man just as surely as an aimed shot, observed more than a century
ago that 'Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men
smoking in an arsenal …’"

Obama is just such a “leader,” a man who actually declared that
the climate change summit in Paris beginning next week would constitute
a “powerful rebuke” to terrorists, "when the world stands as one and
shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our
children.” The American public must understand there is no cure for
ideologically-inspired insanity. It must be voted out of office—or there
may be no future for our children at all.

Arnold Ahlert is a former NY Post op-ed columnist currently contributing to
JewishWorldReview.com, HumanEvents.com and CanadaFreePress.com. He may
be reached at atahlert@comcast.net.Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260905/turkey-russia-turmoil-arnold-ahlert Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

That means
the number of immigrants from Muslim nations who have already come in
is higher than the population of Washington D.C., at 658,893, writes The Washington Examiner, and
will not slow down unless Congress changes the president's open-door
policy. The numbers could increase even more, with Obama planning to add
100,000 refugees, most coming from war-torn Syria.

According to figures from the Department of Homeland Security, President
Barack Obama's immigration policy has allowed 680,000 green cards to be
issued to immigrants from Muslim countries over the past five years,
and that number could repeat in the next five years.

That means
the number of immigrants from Muslim nations who have already come in
is higher than the population of Washington D.C., at 658,893, writes The Washington Examiner, and
will not slow down unless Congress changes the president's open-door
policy. The numbers could increase even more, with Obama planning to add
100,000 refugees, most coming from war-torn Syria. According to Department of Department of Homeland Security Data released by GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions'
Judiciary subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest on
Wednesday, refugees must apply for a green card within one year after
arriving.

Immigrants with green cards have access to federal
benefits, lifetime residency, work authorization, and a direct route to
becoming a U.S. citizen, the release said.

"Without such changes,
the Census Bureau projects that, for each coming year the total number
of immigrants in the United States will increase, the annual rate of
immigrant admissions will increase, and the foreign-born share of the
population will increase," said Sessions' subcommittee release.

The
foreign-born population in the United States is already at a record
41.3 million, the report said, and according to Pew polling, 83 percent
of Americans believe immigration should either be frozen or reduced."By
a nearly 10-1 margin, Americans of all backgrounds are united in their
shared belief that companies with positions to fill should raise wages
instead of bringing in new lower-wage labor from abroad," said Sessions'
release. "And yet, despite this, the Senate's Gang of Eight bill would
have tripled the issuance of green cards over the next decade, and this
year's I-Squared bill would substantially increase both low-wage guest
worker admissions and green card allotments – all on top of the existing
record-breaking and unprecedented growth in future immigration."

The majority of people who have come with green cards were from Pakistan and Iran, at 83,000 each, followed by:

"Despite all the efforts of the Arrogance [the U.S.] ... and even with cooperation from Arab countries, the Palestinian intifada [uprising] has started in the West Bank," says Ayatollah Ali Khamenei • He says Palestinian attackers are not terrorists.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

|Photo credit: AP

Iran's supreme leader said on Wednesday that Iran would support the Palestinian uprising against Israel "in any way we can," and rejected assertions that the recent wave of Palestinian knifings and car-ramming attacks amounted to terrorism.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was speaking a day after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, during a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, described the spate of attacks as "terrorism" that should be condemned.

Israel and the United States have long accused Iran of supplying arms to Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Iran claims it gives only moral, financial and humanitarian support.

"Despite all the efforts of the Arrogance [the United States] ... and even with cooperation from Arab countries, the Palestinian intifada [uprising] has started in the West Bank," Iranian state television quoted Khamenei as telling a gathering of the Basij, Iran's volunteer militia, on Wednesday.

"We will defend the movement of the Palestinian people with all of our existence, and in any way and as long as we can," Khamenei reportedly said.

Khamenei criticized those who call Palestinian attackers "terrorists," saying the Palestinians are a people protesting the occupation of their land.

During the first meeting, the
investigative judge told to me, "You should have a fair chance; the law
will be interpreted broadly." But the opposite has happened. All my 39
requests, all the requests from the defendant have been rejected. ... if
all reasonable requests are rejected, then I cannot defend myself, and I
apparently have to be sentenced at all costs.

I am taken to court for what I have said. But I have said nothing
wrong. Fewer Moroccans, fewer Syrians, fewer Mexicans, fewer Russians, I
do not see why stating that is punishable. However, when Turkish
members of the Dutch parliament call me a tumor that must be fought and
when they compare me to Hitler, then there is no consternation, no
massive complaints on pre-printed forms, no prime minister who speaks
shame of it and no Public Prosecutor to come into action.

What kind of country are we living in?!

Mr. President, members of the Chamber,

I have the right to a fair trial. That is why I am here.
Not to ask you a favor. But to ask you what I am entitled to.
A fair trial. And the right to defend myself in the best possible way.
If you do not give me that chance then this trial will be a farce.

During the first meeting, the investigative judge told to me, "You
should have a fair chance; the law will be interpreted broadly." But the
opposite has happened. All my 39 requests, all the requests from the
defendant have been rejected.
Apparently, I am not allowed an adequate defense.

The investigative judge is uncritically following the Public
Prosecutor. The Chamber agreed with the Public Prosecutor to reject the
first twelve requests. Hopefully, that will not be the case for the 27
rejections that you must decide on now. Because if all reasonable
requests are rejected, then I cannot defend myself, and I apparently
have to be sentenced at all costs.

I am taken to court for what I have said. But I have said nothing wrong.

Fewer Moroccans, fewer Syrians, fewer Mexicans, fewer Russians, I do
not see why stating that is punishable. However, when Turkish members of
the Dutch parliament call me a tumor that must be fought and when they
compare me to Hitler, then there is no consternation, no massive
complaints on pre-printed forms, no prime minister who speaks shame of
it and no Public Prosecutor to come into action.

What kind of country are we living in?!

Geert
Wilders during his March 2014 speech, where he asked "Do you want more
or fewer Moroccans?" (Image source: nos.nl video screenshot)

I speak for millions of Dutch. And I will continue to do so.
That is my duty as a representative of the people.
And that is my right. It is a travesty that I have to stand here before you today.I have done nothing wrong.
At least, I want to be allowed to defend myself in court.
I want to hear witnesses and experts so that I can defend myself.The investigative judge promised me a fair chance, but he did not give me such a chance.
I now turn to you: Give me the chance to defend myself.
Give me the chance to a fair trial.

Geert Wildersis a Member of Parliament in The
Netherlands, and leader of the Party for Freedom [Partij voor de
Frijheid, PVV]. This declaration was delivered before the Court, sitting
in Chambers, The Hague Tribunal, November 25, 2015 at 3:00 pm.Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6958/geert-wilders-court-declaration Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Did
you wonder where the French learned to do the seven-hour commando raid
on the Paris apartment where the Islamic terrorists holed up? Answer: Israel.

Did
you wonder where the French learned to do the seven-hour commando raid
on the Paris apartment where the Islamic terrorists holed up? Answer: Israel.
The training was thanks to an American Jewish non-profit called JINSA,
the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, an actual
conservative group of Jewish patriots.

JINSA has a Law Enforcement Exchange Program, LEEP,
run by Steven Pomerantz, the former assistant director of the FBI.
They send high-level American law enforcement people to Israel to learn
how to fight Islamic terrorists – think the chief of NYPD and the head
of the Counter Terrorism Department of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s
Department. Police and sheriffs from around our country have changed
their counter-terrorism strategy and tactics thanks to cutting-edge
lessons they learned in Israel. LEEP also brings Israeli counter-terror
experts to America to train departments here.

The raid
in the Saint Denis suburb of Paris included some 100 commandos, 5,000
rounds of live fire, dozens of stun grenades, snipers and dogs[.] … The
raid team also used a drone and sent two robots into the apartment in an
attempt to locate the remaining terrorists. … Jean-Michel Fauvergue,
commander of the RAID special police forces unit which carried out the
raid, said many of the techniques used by his team were learned from
Israeli counterterrorism forces.

Will France now pull back from the recent EU vote to promote an economic boycott of Israeli by European consumers? Don’t count on it.

Is the next world war going to start between Turkey and Russia over the crisis in Syria?

The fish restaurants on
Istanbul's boardwark, along the shore of the Bosphorus, are a much
loved haunt for Istanbul residents looking for a place to relax in
the ancient Turkish city. Large seagulls wander fearlessly among the
tourists and passersby. Boats and other vessels sailing the waters only
meters away from the diners give the impression of calm, but actually,
it is here that the Turks witness a most frightening and impressive
event, the sight of Russia flexing its muscles as another Russian
battleship on its way south to Syria passes by every few hours.

The
Russian ships are large and dangerous-looking. The noise they make
causes the plates in the restaurant to tremble - and not just the
plates.

From
the start of the Civil War in Syria in March 2011, Russia and Turkey
have found themselves on opposing sides in the conflict. Russia supports
Assad with all its diplomatic might, and lately, its military power,
while Turkey does everything in its power to overthrow Assad and his
regime. Putin and Erdogan are both strong leaders, feuding atop the
ruins of Syria and the bodies of its people.

Up
to now, the feud between the two was evident mainly in the logistic
help both sides gave, one to Assad and the other to his oppo‎sition, but
lately, a most dangerous direct confrontation seems to be developing
betrween the two countries. Both are ruled by leaders who are drunk with
power and lacking in self control, both cannot separate the personal
dimension from the military, political and cultural one.

Russia
is a secular country concerned with guarding its status as a world
power, while Turkey is a religious Islamist country to whom the status
of Islam as leader of civilization is paramount. Russia has enormous
miilitary power, and Turkey - in addition to its large military strength
- is also a member of NATO, an organization with a list of
longterm grievances against Russia, including Ukraine and the placing of
rockets and artillery in Eastern European countries.

Of
late, Western European members of NATO have been accusng Turkey of
responsibility for the wave of migrants washing up on European shores,
some of whom pass through Turkey. Some European leaders are of the
opinion that Erdogan is flooding the continent with migrants on purpose
in order to carry out what has begun to be called "migrant jihad."

However,
the Syrian issue is much more serious than all the others put together,
because over the past few weeks Russia is directly involved in the
Syrian fighting, and its army - particularly its air force - is carrying
out large scale wartime activities that have led to a large number of
casualties on Turkey's southern border. The Turks, watching the
battleships pass through Turkey - that is, the Bosphorus, sometimes
known as the Istanbul Straits - know full well that these ships carry
deadly weapons that will be used to help Assad, Erdogan's sworn enemy.

Turkish
sensitivity to Russia's warlike activities has increased over the last
few days, when Russian planes began to bomb Turkmen rebel targets to the
east of Latakia, the port city located in the Allawite state that Putin
is establishing for himself and Assad. The Turks could not sit idly by
knowing that their brothers were being attacked by massive Russian
bombs, and decided to act against the Russian bombers.

This
past Tuesday,Turkey downed a Russian Sokay 24 fighter jet which it
claimed entered Turkish air space after it was warned not to do so.
Russia, however, claims that the plane was downed when it was in Syrian
skies and that the incident was a "knife in Russia's back." This is not a
random expression, it hints that Russia sees Turkey as part of Islamic
State and that the country is using the knife-wielding methods of its
protege. After all, Turkey aided Islamic State in many ways over the
last two years, from logistics, starting with oil purchases, on
to smuggling Jihadists across the border. Maybe Putin was even
influenced by the spate of Palestinian Arab knifings when he used that
expression.

In
addition to its sharp verbal response, Russia is advancing S-300 rocket
batteries into northwest Syria. This location will allow Russia to
operate against the Turkish air force deep in Turkish territory and
endanger NATO air force activity at the Interlaken base.

Moscow has a longstanding vendetta
against this air base, because the U-2 and SR-71 spy and photographing
planes would take off from there and circle over the USSR at a height
that precluded dealing with them. Only one U-2 crash landed, because of a
technical failure that forced its pilot to lose height. Closing the
Interlaken air space will be an example of sweet revenge for Russia.

At
the same time, Andrei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, cancelled a
visit to Turkey that was to have taken place this week, called due to
the fear that rising tension between Russiaand Turkey would endanger the trade between the two that equals ten of billions every day.

Erdogan
had said that Turkey could find a substitute for Russian gas and would
rethink its entire trade strategy with Russia. Erdogan knows that
Russia's depressed economic condition makes it fair game for countries
to wave economic issues in Putin's face, but his ego may be even more
important than Russian economics.

Russia
recently limited the movement of Turkish trucks in Russian territory in
the central Asian republics, hurting the exports of Turkey, which has
has other reasons to doubt Russia's intentions as Russia has a good
relationsihp with several Kurdish militias in Syria and Iraq who seem to
be able to deal with the Jihadist forces of Islamic State, at least on a
local level.

At the
last UN General Assembly, Putin announced that the only forces fighting
Islamic State are the Syrian army and the Kurds. Erdogan sees that
announcement as harmful to the Turks and to himself personally, because
in his mind he is also fighting Islamic State, not just the Kurds and
Russians whom he hates.

Another
bench player on the field of conflict between Russia and Turkey is
America. President Obama is in a quandary. On the one hand he worries
about Putin suddenly escalating his activities against Turkey, a NATO
member who might request protection from its allies, first among them
the USA. In the case of a violent dispute between acountry that is a
NATO member and one that is not, it is expected that NATO allies will
come to the aid of that member both militarily and economically.

Obama
does not want to be involved in the dispute beween Turkey and Russia,
because that will force him to admit that there is a problem in the
Middle East that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not
affect in the least. The heads of the European NATO countries do not
want to face Putin in battle either. They did not do so in Ukraine,
their eastern neighbor, and they will not do it in Syria, which is
neither a neighbor nor European. Besides, Obama does not want to go to
war with Putin because Putin is too strong, too resolute and too
dangerous. Erdogan is also too impulsive for Obama's taste, whch is why
Washington has called on Russia and Turkey to straighten out their
differences quietly and calm down the atmosphere.

The
problem is that last week, several official Russian organzations
announced that they are severing ties with Turkish organizations
while travel agencies are cancelling tours booked for Russians to
Turkey. This will cause significant economic damage to tourist spots
which do quite well on the income from Russian tourism.

After
the Russian passenger plane blew up over the Sinai, Russian tourists
were sent to Turkey as an alternate site. If this tourism is afraid to
go to Turkey where can it go? to Israel? That would be good news for
Eilat's hotel owners, but not good for Israel. It won't take a minute
for Israel to be held responsible for creating the conflict between
Turkey and Russia so that it could convince Russian tourists to forget
travelling to Sinai and Turkey and enjoy Israel's beautiful and pristine
beaches.

Conspiracy theory runs rampant in the MIddle East. Even the fish in the Bosphorus and the gulls of Istanbul are party to it.